Fez - Morocco: Part 1

What a crazy trip! We spent 5 whirlwind days zipping around the country. We left Piacenza on a 6am train and then caught a bus from Milan to the Bergamo airport. Noah was already quite happy due to the fact that we got to take a train, a bus, and a plane.

We actually packed the lightest that we ever have in our lives. I took a large purse, Jeff had a small backpack and Noah had his little backpack…and that’s it! The Ryanair baggage restrictions are really tight and they make their money by charging a lot to check a bag. Of course, being the cheapskates that we are, we did not pay to check a bag despite the fact that we knew we would want to buy a lot of stuff in the markets. So we put a good deal of effort into taking the bare minimum. It was really funny. Noah’s backpack was empty except for a lint roller (his toy of choice for the trip). I only took 3 shirts with the plan to leave one that I didn’t want anymore in Morocco. I wore one pair of pants and one pair of sandals and that was it. Jeff took the exact same, but left 2 old shirts instead of just one.

The plane ride gave us a good idea of what to expect in Morocco. It was total chaos! Most of the people on the plane were Moroccan and there were a ton of families with lots of kids. There were between 30 and 40 kids and about 10 of those were infants. We’d never seen so many kids before on a plane and the ensuing noise was hysterical. All you could do was laugh. Every infant was screaming and the kids were bouncing off the walls. Upon landing about 75% of the plane stood up and started to get their stuff from the overhead compartments! We were still taxiing and the attendants were yelling for everyone to sit down, but they were completely unsuccessful. One of the Moroccans gave me a big smile as if to say that he knew that you weren’t supposed to be getting up, but if the entire plane was going to do it then that’s the way it goes. Jeff and I were cracking up at this introduction to Morocco.

We got off the plane in Fez and took a taxi to our Bed and Breakfast in the medina. The medina is the historical center of a Moroccan town and it’s traditionally made up of narrow little streets that wind and zig-zag all around. The medina of Fez was nuts. There were no streets signs anywhere and the little streets were filled to the brim with shops, olive carts, donkeys (lots and lots of donkeys), and a ton of people. It was a good thing that we did not bring a stroller because it would have been impossible to use it in Fez.

With Fez as our first destination we were a little overwhelmed. It was total chaos. There were feral cats everywhere eating weird pieces of meat; lots of donkey poop; and exorbitant amounts of dirt. The smells of the city were super intense…in fact I swear my bag still smells like Fez. It was also a million degrees outside and at one point Noah definitely looked like he was melting. We were all dragging a little bit. Of course what did we do? We did as the locals do and sipped the hotest mint tea on the face of the Earth…we’re talking boiling. I’m surprised our tongues are still intact. Despite the feeling of being in an untouched part of the world, there were a surprising number of tourists…not overwhelming in any way like Florence, but there were more than we expected.

Our B&B was a beautifully restored Riad right in the middle of the medina maze in an unnamed passageway, off of an unnamed alley, off of an unnamed little street. We definitely would not have been able to find it on our on and luckily there was someone who came to meet us.

While in Fez Jeff and I got to experience one of the neatest things we have ever done. We went to get massages at a “local” Turkish Bath which seemed to have been in use for hundreds of years. When I say local, I mean that it was not a place meant for tourists by any means and the experience was out of this world and totally primal. It was nothing like the Turkish Baths that we went to in Budapest. Given how crazy my “massage” was I’m going to explain it all in detail.

When I walked in, the conversation in the room stopped and everyone watched as I tried to communicate in the worst French ever what I wanted. It turned out that the women there spoke only Berber and Arabic so I was out of luck. But we got it taken care of and then I followed their directions as best I could using gestures. They had me strip down all the way to my underwear and then my lady grabbed my hand and took me into the baths. My lady was probably about 60, but she looked a lot older. She was naked except for a pair of underwear and had her hair up in a bun. She took me into this dark room lit only by the little square skylights in the dome above and had me sit in the corner on the tiled ground while she prepared the buckets. She made trips back and forth to the baths filling up 7 large buckets that she lined up around us. Using a bowl she quickly slopped the water from one bucket to another making each bucket a little hotter than the next.

While she did this I couldn’t help but observe that the room was filled with local women who had come to wash themselves. Apparently they come to the Turkish Baths a couple times a week to strip all the way down and really wash themselves. They were all different ages and sat with their backs to the wall using special sponges to wash. Occasionally one would get up to get more hot water in one of her two buckets, but other than that there wasn’t much movement and everyone bathed in silence.

So once the buckets were ready for me my lady starting throwing water from the various buckets on me--in my face, over my head, against my back, and down my front--and each time the water had a different temperature which made my skin tingle. Then she washed and combed my hair and started scrubbing me everywhere with a dark red scrub that I was later told contained 48 spices that help to purify the body. She patted my shoulders to show me how she wanted me to lie. I was constantly moving…on my stomach (always on the ground), on my back with my head in her lap (and her breasts hanging down in my face while she scrubbed), sitting up with my back against her, etc. The ground was slippery from all the water and I felt like a fish out of water trying to flop over when she patted me. After the scrub came another round of bucket water dumping and then she started applying argin oil which is a famous oil only made in Morocco. At that point came the massage. This was no relaxing massage and yet at the same time I’ve never been so relaxed. Within the first couple of minutes of the entire experience I realized that I needed to just go with the flow even if it was out of my normal comfort zone. The smell of the Turkish Bath, along with the dim light, the heat of the room, and the total silence blew me away. It was entrancing. I lay on the ground staring at the little colored skylights above while my lady massaged away and all I could do was smile.

Jeff’s experience was about the same as mine minus the locals. In other words, it was just him and a half-naked man slapping him around in a dark room. He did his at 10pm and the local men had already bathed and gone home.

We both agreed that this experience was absolutely awesome on every level and we’re really glad we did it.

From Fez we caught a train to Casablanca, but of of course catching the train turned out to be an adventure in itself of which I will explain in the next blog entry. Stay tuned!